Part 8

“But they gave us only harsh words, saying that our cowherds had fallen first upon their men, who were but seeking for some of their beasts that had strayed; that as for the cattle, they had taken them in fair fight and should keep them; and our brothers they should keep also to be slaves to them. And their chief boasted and said that his people are called the Warriors, and that warriors they be; that they are mightier than we, and are able to drive us into the hills and take away all our cattle, and take also our women and our young men to be their slaves. And their chief showed us his axe, the like of which we have never seen, for it was yellow and shining and of very great sharpness, and he said that with this axe he hath slain above threescore men. Then he sent us away, and we departed and came to our own village again, and brought these woeful tidings to our people.

“And yet worse remains still to be told. For we have deemed it prudent to send out spies to watch their village, and our spies have brought us word that the Warriors are going about their streets painted and arrayed for battle, and that the Medicine Men are making daily sacrifices to their gods, that their people may prosper in battle; and by these things we are assured that they will soon make war on us.

“And now, O Chief, we are come to seek help from you and your people; and we pray you to aid us to fight against the Warriors and drive them back across the water, lest they, having conquered us and burned our village, fall next upon your people and do the like to you.”

Then Garff looked round upon the elder men and said:

“Shall we not do amiss if we withhold help from these our friends in their need? Let us join our arms to theirs and fight side by side with them against the men who are their enemies and ours.”

And the men all said, “Yes, we will fight.”

Then Garff made an agreement with the Lake Men that they should return at once to their village, and set spies to watch the fords of the river and the village of the Warriors; and if an army should be seen to leave the village, then the Lake People were to light three beacon fires upon the top of the hill above their village, and he and his men would come to their aid.

And Garff sent Tig, with seven young men, to make a camp on the hills within sight of the Lake People’s hill, that they might watch by day and night for the signal. Then the three Lake Men departed and went back to their village.

So Tig and his companions packed their stores and took their arms, their best bows and all their war-arrows and their shields of wickerwork covered with hide; and pitched their camp up in the hills. They watched the hill, day and night, for the alarm-fire; and meantime they prepared themselves for battle, dyeing and painting their bodies with red paint and blue paint; also they exercised themselves in war-games and dances.

Early in the morning of the third day the men on the look-out saw three columns of smoke rising from the top of the hill far off. So Tig sent two of the young men who were swift runners to carry the news to Garff, and he sent Eira, and the other women who had been with them, home also; and he and his five companions set off to go to the Lake Village.

_Chapter the Thirtieth_

_How they Fought the Battle in the Wood_

WHEN Garff and his men reached the Lake Village, they found the people armed and ready. The Chief of the Lake People, whose name was Bran, came out to meet Garff, and he called him and some of his men into the council that they might make a plan of war. And he told Garff that his spies had seen the army of the Warriors muster at daybreak on the river bank. They had crossed in canoes, and had built a stockade on this side of the water, and dragged the canoes ashore. They had been seen fixing long poles to the canoes, which were light ones made of wicker and hide; and it was thought that they meant to carry some of the canoes over the hills to the lake, so that one band of their men might attack the island from the canoes, while another band should try to force the gangway.

Then one of the old men stood up and said:

“Surely this will be their plan! But how can we meet them better than here on our island, where the water and our good wall are our defence? Our fathers met their foes thus and beat them back. What is this talk that I hear of going forth to battle in the woods? If we leave our defences, we are lost.”

Then Bran said that it was the wish of some of the younger men to march out and try to take their enemies by surprise in the woods, and that he himself was in favour of this plan.

“Surely,” said Garff, “that is the right plan. If you had meant to stay at home and fight behind walls, you had not needed help from us; and we, too, might have taken our folks and our cattle and shut ourselves up in our hill-fort. No, leave some of your older men that can yet bear arms to stay by the village and defend it if need be. But let the rest of us go out and fall upon these Warriors suddenly in the woods; and let some of the young men go and watch the fords, to see that none of the enemy cross the river elsewhere and take us in the rear; but let us start without delay.”

So they marched at once; and since Bran was an old man and less skilled in warfare than Garff, he gave the command of all the men to him, and he himself marched behind.

When they had gone some distance through the forest, and had come to an open place upon the hill-side, Garff made the men halt and hide themselves in a thicket at the edge of the wood; and he sent Tig with two others to spy for the advance of the enemy. Tig and his companions crept away through the bushes and were gone for some time. At length they came back swiftly and cautiously, with news that they had seen a large band of the enemy in the wood below, all fully armed with bows and slings, and spears and axes and clubs, and carrying four canoes in their rear. So Garff set all his men in battle-line, and bade them lie still until the enemy should be well out into the open ground. Then, at a signal, they were to leap up suddenly and shoot a flight of arrows and rush upon the Warriors, every one marking his man.

Presently they heard voices and saw the figures of the leaders appear among the trees. The Warriors were sure of victory, and they had no thought of the Lake Men coming out to meet them; so they were marching carelessly along, thinking more of getting their canoes up the hill than of preparing to fight. They streamed out into the open, led by their chief who was carrying his axe on his shoulder. Garff waited till the band were well away from the shelter of the trees, and then he sprang to his feet with a great shout. At once his men leaped up, and sent a deadly shower of arrows at the enemy; and every man, as soon as he had shot, fitted another arrow and shot again. Many of the Warriors fell, and many were wounded, and they were thrown into great confusion. But their chief rushed down their ranks shouting to them not to give way, but to take their shields and advance. Then to gain time and to save his broken line, he dashed forward alone, holding up his arm. Garff signed to his men to cease shooting, and the chief of the Warriors came on shouting:

“Let one of you fight with me! If there be a man among you, let him come forth and fight with me!”

Then Garff strode out from among his men and went forward to meet the chief, who stood brandishing his axe, which glittered as he waved it in the sunlight. And the chief cried out:

“Ho! Ho! This is my axe! Skull-pecker is his name, for he has pecked open many a skull--ay, and split them in twain and eaten up the brains. Come on, come on! He will split thy skull even as the others, and slice thy flesh and chop up thy bones. Come on, come on!”

But when the chief saw Garff coming out to meet him, he stopped his boasting, for he saw that he had met as tough a fighter as himself.

Each man had thrown down his shield and each grasped his axe with both hands. Garff’s weapon was a battle-axe of stone, heavy and strong, but not so keen as the bronze axe of his enemy and not so deadly, unless he could get in a sweeping blow. The chief of the Warriors was taller than Garff, but not stronger, though Garff had the longer arms and was the more active of the two; also the chief had been wounded in the thigh by an arrow, and although he had tugged it out, he could not stop the flow of blood.

For a few seconds they faced one another without moving, and then the chief made a sudden leap forward and aimed a tremendous blow at Garff’s head. Garff leaped back to avoid the blow, and then rushed in and aimed a return stroke as his enemy’s axe swung round, and the chief leaped back. So they went on, striking and avoiding warily, until Garff began to give way, leaping backward at each attack and not striking again in return, for he saw that his enemy was spending his strength, and he meant to save his own. Never for a second did Garff cease to fix his eyes on his enemy’s eyes, and the two faced each other savagely. Then the chief rushed at Garff again in a fury, and struck with all his might. Garff avoided again, and jabbed upward with his axe-head to parry the blow, but he was not quick enough, and got a deep cut in the arm. Then the chief pressed hard upon him, thinking to end him with one blow; but Garff parried the stroke and gave a mighty spring, and before his enemy could recover, dealt him a blow on the right shoulder, so that he dropped his axe and fell prone. Then Garff picked up the bronze axe of the chief and drove it deep into his skull, then waved his own axe over his head and gave a great shout.

When the Warriors saw their leader fall, they uttered loud cries, and some of them rushed forward with spears and axes. But Tig leaped out, and Garff’s men and the Lake Men with him, and Garff waved the dripping axe, and they rushed upon the band and put them to flight and chased them through the woods, every one marking his man. And they killed many of them there and many by the river-side, and only those escaped who flung themselves into the river and swam across.

Then Garff and Bran called their men together, and they found that only five had been killed in the fight and seven wounded. And they sought out the bodies of their enemies that were fallen, and took their weapons and their necklaces and cut off their heads; and Garff cut off the head of the chief, and took his necklace of amber and his famous bronze axe, Skull-pecker; and so they all marched back in triumph, carrying their spoils and the heads of their enemies, to their own villages.

_Chapter the Thirty-first_

_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: How they dug out the Barrow_

“I AM afraid,” said Uncle John, when the chapter was finished, “that we shall not be able to have any more reading these holidays; for to-morrow and the next day I shall be away from home. There is one day left after that, as you know, but instead of the story I have planned an outing for us, which I have been trying to arrange ever since we read about the burial of the Old Chief. My plan is this. Up on the moor, beyond the place where we found the pit-dwellings, there is a barrow, as it is called, the burial mound of one of the old chiefs of the time that we have been reading about. The owner of the land, who is a friend of mine, intends to open the barrow; the work is to be begun to-morrow, and he has invited us to go and see what there is to be seen.”

So on the next day they all set off to the moor with a big hamper of provisions and a tea-kettle and a spade each. There were several mounds and barrows on the high parts of the moor, and in one place there were three huge standing stones marking what had once been a whole circle of stones.

They walked over the moor until they found the squire and his men. The men were already at work with picks and shovels, and had made a deep cutting in the side of the barrow. At first they had dug through a quantity of the heathery soil and gravel, but after a while they came to large stones; and digging these out and carrying them back out of the way was very hard work.

Uncle John rolled one aside and said to the boys:

“Can any of you find me another stone like this one anywhere on the moor round about?”

They looked at the stone, which was a smooth rounded boulder, and then searched the ground round about. But the only stones that were there were small and rough. “This one came from the bed of the stream down below there,” said Uncle John, “don’t you see it is water-worn. The men who built this barrow carried that stone and these others like it all the way up here on their shoulders.”

After they had had lunch, the work was begun again, the men pulling out the big stones one after another. At last they came to where several large flat stones were set on edge, leaning one against another. These were pulled away, and then there was discovered a little chamber right in the centre of the barrow, walled in with flat stones; and in the midst of this little chamber a large urn of baked earthenware. Before anything was moved, Uncle John brought the boys to look, and showed them how the floor of the little chamber had been strewn with fine white sand upon which the urn was set. Beside it were three smaller vessels all empty, and lying beside them were two flint arrow-heads, a small stone axe, and a hammer made out of the thick end of a red deer’s antler bored with a hole to fit a handle into. Uncle John lifted the urn carefully out and they all looked inside it. It was full of dust and ashes, and some bits of charred bone, and some chips and splinters of flint that had also been burned. These relics were all gathered carefully together to be taken to the squire’s house, and the workmen began to put away their tools.

As Uncle John and the boys walked home, Dick asked: “Did those people burn every one who died?”

“Perhaps not every one, but they did it very often.”

“Why did they?”

“That is a hard question for me to answer--it was part of their religion, I suppose; anyway perhaps they thought it the safest thing to do.”

“Did they always kill a man’s dog, too?”

“That I don’t know. In many cases no doubt they did, because dog’s bones have been found in the barrows; sometimes horses’ bones have been found too, showing that people thought their horses could follow them to the spirit-world, and sometimes, it is thought, that a man’s slaves and even his wife were taken to the grave and killed, so that their spirits might attend his after death.”

“How did they bore the holes in their axes and things?” David asked. “The hole in that hammer was as smooth as if it had been drilled.”

“I daresay it was drilled,” said Uncle John. “Not with a flint tool, perhaps, but most likely with quite a different thing--a hollow stick, like a tube, with the boring end wetted and dipped in sand. With a tool of that sort you can bore a hole in any stone, if you keep on at it long enough, just as you can fine down wood or metal with sandpaper.”

“I suppose you would twirl the stick between your hands and press hard on the top of it,” said David. “And if the stone were hard you would want fine, sharp sand,” said Dick.

“Is there any more about Tig in the book?” Joe asked.

“Yes, I believe there is more--he lived to be a very old man and became Chief in his time, and to him Garff bequeathed the wonderful bronze axe, Skull-pecker. He had much fighting to do; but he beat back his enemies and kept his people’s hunting-grounds and their cattle safe, as long as he lived.”

On the evening of the last day of the holidays Uncle John took the boys into his study and opened the drawer in the cabinet where his arrow-heads were.

“Now,” he said, “I want each of you to choose a flint out of this lot, and keep it as a reminder of what we have been reading about. Each one can have his pick in turn--Dick first, because he was here first, and Joe next and then David, as that is the order in which we met one another.” There were plenty to choose from, and they each chose one of the barbed war-arrows. Then Uncle John said:

“When I was a boy I used to know an old gentleman who had a flint arrow-head, and I used to wish he would give it to me. But no--he set great store by it and wore it on his watch-chain, mounted as a charm. He called it a fairy-bolt, because he said that it had been made and shot away by the fairies; and he thought it would bring him good luck all his life. I hope you are all pleased with your flints; and though, perhaps, they can’t bring you any good luck, at any rate you have learned something about them, and about the people who made and used them long ago, in this same country in which we live and now call England.”

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Transcriber’s Notes

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained. Differences in chapter titles between the table of contents and individual chapter headings for Chapters V, X, XV, XVIII, XXI, XXVI, and XXVII are preserved here.

The following apparent typographical errors were corrected:

Page 86, “villge” changed to “village.” (before anyone else in the village was born)

Page 126, “firtree” changed to “fir tree.” (sticks and pieces of dried fir tree wood)

Page 127, “it” changed to “if.” (if she did not want to use them all)